|
|
||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
Chapter 18 - Mischief By Antiques I was once asked to study a rich man's house in San Francisco. The host was fond of antiques. From the stone lions at the gate to the sitting-room, there were antiques everywhere. There were Buddha statues; chinaware such as kettles, bowls and basins; beasts and birds made of jade; ancient paintings; tables and chairs; inscribed boards, or cooking tools used by ancients; there were even clothes and beds left by ancient people. His addiction to antiques was obvious. What was difficult to understand was that he even bought the tablets of gods worshipped by ancient people. Very strange things happened: During that year, the host always felt a temperature on his forehead, a smell of fish in his mouth and felt very tired and often hot-tempered. The hostess often saw shadows in the house walking from one room to another, or sitting on the sofa. She was often wakened up by the shadows she saw in her dreams. She had never had one peaceful night of sleep. She felt like surrounded by ghosts and even thought of the end of her life. Their daughter was a Catholic and used to be well-behaved. But recently, she had changed dramatically. She was dizzy, smiling one moment and screaming the next moment at her parents. She had started heavy drinking and smoking. Each time she came back home from outside, she was angry, fierce and malicious. She was utterly another person. She was like mad. The family members had one illness after another and they were all stubborn diseases. For example, they had red and swollen patches of skin, vomiting and diarrhea alternatively; their stomach was bloated; the food was tasteless; muscles were sore; they also suffered from constipation. They went to see the doctor who could find nothing wrong and offered no way to cure them. They had also consulted many masters of geomancy in San Francisco, who all agreed that there were problems. They had made changes here and changes there; but none of the changes had changed the undesirable situation. Naturally I felt something wrong as soon as I entered the house. After some careful examination, however, I found that it was not the visible things that were faulty, and that it was the antiques that were to blame. Among the many antiques, three carried "spirits" with them. The first was a jar, with a huge body but a small mouth; it was a big water jar, made in Yunnan Province, China. It was once used to keep insects. There were once many poisonous insects inside. Their spirits remained strong enough to make mischief. The second was an armour, the kind of armour worn by soldiers in ancient Europe. The owner was killed but his spirit was attached to the armour. So it had some spiritual power. On the day of the soldier's death, it would assume a stronger spiritual power to make mischief. The third was a stone tablet, a tablet from a temple in ancient China. It used to be offered sacrifices in its time. Now the host had bought it and put it in the sitting-room. As it had been offered sacrifices for a long, long time, the spiritual power it had collected still remained. It also haunted the house. After I told the host all this, the hostess told me: "In my dreams, I am always bitten by snakes, and worms crawl all over me. It is very disgusting. I will be fighting with all those worms all night till daybreak. During sunset, I have seen the shadow of a tall soldier, looking very elegant. I have seen him several times. Apart from that, there are many other shadows of ghosts, very mysterious and frightening." Both the host and the hostess begged me to save them. At their request, I recited forbidding mantras to the three antiques, and then told them to take the three things to a curiosity shop and sell them there cheaply. It was said later that after the three objects were sold to the curiosity shop, the family was saved; it was like some kind of medicine that cured the disease then and there. I, Living Buddha Lian Shen, have studied many houses of this kind. Rich people often buy antiques that still have spirits attached to them. These curiosities do add grandeur to the house, but if they make the house haunted, it is not worth the trouble. It does not pay off, really, to buy objects with spiritual powers in order to show off one's wealth. In buying antiques for the sitting-room, one has to know first the sources of the antique, if they have been offered sacrifices, if they have been kept in temples, the relations between the owner and the objects, what the text on them says, if they were objects buried with the dead in ancient times, if they have pictures of Buddhas or gods. Such information is very important because objects that carry spirits with them will affect the magnetic field and make the place haunted. I believe that wood and stone that have gods carved on them or wood and stone that have the shape of a human or an animal, do sometimes have spirits hidden in them. If they do, they make mischief, major or minor. This is an extra chapter to geomancy. It is about unlucky features that people don't usually expect.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|